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Observational Research -
Advantages and Disadvantages
- Advantages
- What people say they do is often different what they actually
do so observations might be valid than questionaires.
- Gives a more realist picture of spontaneous behaviour, likely to have a high ecological validity.
- Provides a means of conducting preliminary investigations
in a new area of research, to produce hypotheses for future
investigations.
- What people say they do is often different what they actually
do so observations might be valid than questionaires.
- Disadvantages
- Can be little or no control of EV which may mean something
unknown to the observer may account for the behaviour
observed.
- Observer may 'see' what he or she expects to see (observer bias), different observers 'see' different things,
leads to low-inter-rater reliability.
- If Participants don't know they are being observed there are
ethical problems. If participants know they are being observed
they might alter their behaviour.
- Can be little or no control of EV which may mean something
unknown to the observer may account for the behaviour
observed.
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